It’s no secret that Tony Elliott and his family have been visible at Doug Kingsmore for many baseball games over the years.
Elliott discussed how baseball was his first passion and a few other things that some may not know about himself and baseball this past week. Like his oldest son’s love of baseball.
“Right now, my oldest son Ben’s ate up with it,” Elliott said. “He loves baseball. He’s seven years old and is playing with the eight and under. He just has a passion for it so to just be able to sit down and share with him what was my first passion was, as it relates to sports, nice.”
As hot of a commodity as he is makes it easy to understand that Tony Elliott is a pretty good football coach but how many knew that his first love was not football? When asked about his many trips to Doug Kingsmore he’s made to watch Clemson baseball, he gave some interesting insight into that.
“So, growing up in California that (baseball) was my first love,” Elliott said. “The first ball I picked up was a baseball and for those who are familiar with California know baseball’s king out there. I didn’t touch a basketball until I moved to the south. So, it was baseball first and then at about 12 years old I started getting into football. It was instilled in me at a young age. I really liked the internal battle and just the internal competition of the game.”
It was also interesting to find out how good of a relationship he has not only with head coach Monte Lee but also with assistant Bradley LeCroy.
“I see Monte all the time, we speak all of the time,” Elliott said. “But I probably spend more time with Bradley (LeCroy), because of our boy’s ages. I’d say I’m closer with Bradley, because he has two sons that are at an age close to my sons. So, they’re always out in the yard and you know, during football season when I’m tied up Bradley does a good job with the boys taking them out in the yard and letting them hit tennis balls or taking them to the tennis court to work on different fundamentals.”